


Alone and Young

by mariecherie, my_deer_friend



Series: Compromise verse [2]
Category: Hamilton - Miranda
Genre: Abuse of Authority, Alex gets fostered by the Laurenses, Alternate Universe - Foster Family, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Blood Drinking, Choking, Dark, Drug Use, Dubious Consent, Family Issues, First Kiss, Gay John Laurens, Hand Jobs, Horny Teenagers, Horror, House Party, Implied/Referenced Drug Addiction, John finally gets some sexy action, Johnny Manning is a total bro, M/M, Making Out, Politics, Threats of Violence, background lesbians, inappropriate feelings between foster siblings
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-02-19
Updated: 2021-03-13
Packaged: 2021-03-15 12:33:30
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 14,039
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29559156
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mariecherie/pseuds/mariecherie, https://archiveofourown.org/users/my_deer_friend/pseuds/my_deer_friend
Summary: More Compromise verse! A collection of deleted scenes, requests and alternative POVs that take place during the timeline ofA Portrait of the Artist.
Relationships: Alexander Hamilton & John Laurens, Alexander Hamilton/John Laurens
Series: Compromise verse [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1966405
Comments: 12
Kudos: 28





	1. John at the D.C. party

**Author's Note:**

> Welcome to the first bonus scene from _A Portrait of the Artist_! 
> 
> We start with a popular request (thanks to @ThatWouldBee_Enough and Mari): this is the D.C. party that John goes to during the, ahem, action of chapter 22.
> 
> \---
> 
> The title of this work comes from a quote out of James Joyce's _A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man._

“Jackie!”

John feels a strong hand clapping him on the shoulder as soon as he climbs out of his Uber. He turns to the guy giving him an exuberant smile and cuffs him on the arm.

“Johnny,” he greets, and his grin of relief and excitement comes easily. 

He already started feeling better during the brief car ride, after finally being able to escape his father’s tense orbit and Alex’s jagged energy. It’s been a weird few weeks. Although Alex’s presence is usually a balm, they’ve been rubbing each other the wrong way lately, and after a whole day of keeping up his best fucking behaviour for dad, the only thing he wants to do now is the very opposite - to let loose in a dangerous and entirely unsanctioned way.

With a goal like that, he can think of no better person to call than Johnny Manning.

Martha’s brother, four years older and now in his junior year of college, is about as close to a genuine rebel as their insular community has ever produced. John remembers being scandalised as a little kid when he overheard dinner-table talk about all the delinquent behaviour Johnny got up to - shoplifting, and drinking, and running away from home, and doing _things_ with girls, and the one time he stole his dad’s gun and walked around with it for a whole afternoon. At first, John had been shocked. Then, as he’d grown up and opened his eyes a little more, the aversion had morphed into admiration.

It helped that Johnny had been cool with him kissing Martha, and he’d even been cool - suspiciously so - when John had made it clear he didn’t want to do it again. 

Maybe he’s more of an open book than he thinks.

“Glad you could make it, kid,” Johnny says, getting a firmer grip on his shoulder and leading him towards the big suburban house, humming with music and heaving with bodies.

“Wouldn’t have missed it.” 

And fuck, he feels like a million bucks, walking into a legit house party thrown by college students, the specially invited guest of this rebellious older kid who’s so cool he shouldn’t even give John the time of day - but does. With his leather jacket, skinny jeans, tattoos and undercut, Johnny looks like exactly the sort of person he’s been taught to avoid. But Johnny’s a genuinely good guy. It took John a shamefully long time to realise it, because all of dad’s lessons about morality always focused on external actions - on _performing_ goodness - rather than inherent qualities. 

“You’re sticking with me tonight,” Johnny shouts in his ear once they have been swallowed up by the noise and heat inside the house.

“I’m not a little kid,” John shouts back, giving him a smirk.

But Johnny just laughs and keeps a firm, protective hand on his upper back. It gives him an energising sort of confidence, like the action is his stamp of approval among these kids that might not otherwise accept him. “The Senator would be very upset if you don’t get home in one piece.”

“Yeah, well - fuck him.”

Johnny actually stops mid-stride, then turns John so that they’re facing each other. He gives him an impressed eyebrow raise. “Well, well, maybe little Jackie _is_ growing up.”

John gives a defiant shrug, but his smile is all pleasure. 

“Okay, kid, I wasn’t sure if you’d be cool, but… I think you’ve just earned yourself a beer.”

Johnny steers him through to the bathroom, where the tub has been filled with ice and a wide assortment of colourful bottles. He pulls out two beers, flicks the caps off with his keys, and hands one to John. They both take a sip, John doing his utmost not to twist his mouth as the bitter fizz hits him.

“So, what’s the plan for tonight?” Johnny asks him.

“Hang out, have some fun, break curfew. Oh, and!” John digs into his satchel and pulls out the little plastic bag where he’s stashed some joints - the good stuff, not the eighty-percent-tobacco shit. 

Johnny frowns seriously, and for a second John’s heart sinks at the thought that he's done something wrong. Johnny grabs lightly onto his chin and turns his head to one side and then to the other. Then he drops the stern act and laughs. “Who are you and what have you done with Jackie Laurens?”

“Told you,” John says, trying to remain aloof but squirming with delight on the inside. “I’m not a kid anymore.”

The beer goes down quickly, washing away the last vestiges of stress from dinner, along with the niggling guilt of having left Alex behind. But it’s not like John has to do _everything_ with his foster brother. He’s allowed to snatch moments away to live his own life. John shares everything with his siblings - his time, his advice, his personal space, his energy, even his bed. Surely it’s okay to have this _one_ night for himself. Alex can make friends of his own if he wants to go partying that badly.

Fuck, thinking about Alex is just sharpening the guilt. He needs to stop.

Johnny leads him out into the vast, meticulously manicured back garden and they light up a joint - not even trying to hide it. John sucks in one big lungful, then a second one, before he passes it across to Johnny.

“Not that I’m against all of - this,” Johnny says, waving the hand with the lit joint vaguely in John’s direction. “But I hope you’re being careful, kid.”

John feels his brain sinking into a pleasant, muffled haze. “What do you mean?”

“I think your dad’s tolerance for bad behaviour is a little lower than mine.” 

The beer, the weed and the stress come-down loosen his tongue. “I don’t give a fuck what he thinks,” he says, not meaning it, but hoping he sounds cool and aloof anyway.

Johnny sees through some of the veneer. “I don’t think your opinion is going to sway him.”

“Whatever.” John rolls his eyes. “He’s a piece of shit but it’s not like he’s ever really done anything to me.” Except scare the shit out of John with threats, and steer every consequential decision in his life, and destroy all his self-esteem with cutting taunts, and-- No. 

Not tonight.

“That’s because you’re a model son. But you don’t wanna step so far out of line that you get sent where they sent me.” Johnny reaches the joint back across.

John draws his eyebrows together. “What?” 

Johnny’s next laugh is awkward and a little bitter. “That year I vanished for the whole summer? They called it a camp for at-risk youths. Basically some sick cross between juvie and church and boot camp. Don’t recommend it.”

“Oh. Shit.” John takes a drag. He doesn’t really know what to say about that, and his brain is starting to get a little sluggish.

“So, your dad pick up any new strays, then?” Johnny asks.

He immediately thinks of Alex, and how his jaw muscles tightened at the taunts from Frankie and Louis. “Hey, don’t be rude.”

Johnny laughs. “Sorry. Old habits - you know how we always joked about it.” 

“No?” He’s pretty sure he’d remember that. Clearly that’s something he was left out of.

“Ah. Oops.” Johnny has the decency to look embarrassed. “Only, you have to admit it’s a little weird.”

John frowns. “No, it’s philanthropic.” It takes him a few tries to get the word out.

Johnny gives him a piercing look. “Right.”

“It is! Not everyone’s as lucky as we are to grow up well off, okay?”

Johnny snorts, giving John a look like he’s said something naive. “Yes, well, and I’m sure the Senator is _very_ concerned about the plight of marginalised youths,” he says breezily. “You go ask those kids how lucky they feel after their little stay at Casa Laurens.”

He defends his father on reflex. “You’re being a dick.”

“Chill, Jackie. I’m just saying, your dad has a pretty specific type.”

John’s brain tries to latch into that - a type? - but before he can properly mull it over, two giggling girls in short, sparkling party dresses sidle up next to them. They have their arms slung low around each other’s waists. The girl nearest Johnny is fiddling absently with the hem of the other girl’s dress, her fingers grazing the smooth upper thigh almost suggestively.

They join them, and one loops an arm around Johnny’s shoulder, though her fingers remain intertwined with her friend’s even as she presses a kiss to Johnny’s cheek.

“Hey, Johnny,” she drawls, grinning up at him. 

He raises a pleased eyebrow. “Hey, darling.”

The other girl sidles up next to John and puts a hand on his shoulder, then rests her chin on top of her hand. She stares up at him.

“Who’s this cutie?” she asks. She slips her other hand free and caresses it along the back of John’s forearm, plucking the joint out from between his fingers. An odd shiver chases up his skin.

John gives her a nervous half-smile and stares at her bright red lips as she places the joint between them and pouts to suck a mouthful of smoke in.

“My old buddy Jackie, up from Carolina for the night.”

“Oooh, a southern boy,” she purrs, blowing the smoke out past his face. “Go on, say something in that charming accent of yours.”

“Uh, I don’t really...” John stammers, then glances to Johnny for help.

Johnny leans in to murmur into the ear of the girl draped around him, and a second later she passes on the whispered message to her friend.

The friend giggles, tugs at a curl that has come loose around John’s face, then takes her hands off him. “Sorry, honey, didn’t wanna make you feel uncomfortable,” she says, and her tone now is less flirty and a lot friendlier and more amused. “Was only kidding, this gorgeous thing’s my girlfriend anyway.”

She squeezes the other girl’s waist, tugging her away from Johnny. The other girl squeals and flings her arms around her girlfriend's neck, presses a kiss to the bright painted mouth.

“It’s fine,” he says, smiling more easily. “Don’t worry about it.”

“Well, aren’t you just precious, Jackie!” she teases, fending off another enthusiastic kiss. 

“It’s John, actually,” he says. The childish nickname just sounds wrong on her bright red lips.

Both girls, still draped around each other in a loose embrace, break into a fit of laughter. The one in red lipstick looks incredulously between them. “Wait. Is every hot guy from your town called John?”

“Don’t start,” Johnny laughs.

John flushes, hoping that the darkness hides it. This girl had said the word ‘girlfriend’ so easily, and no one around them had batted an eyelid. Even their touches, a little too lingering to be innocent, aren’t attracting any more scrutiny than Johnny’s occasional, appreciative glance.

“What kinda fun are you looking for tonight, then, John?” the girl who touched him asks. 

John smiles skewly. “I dunno. Just...”

He catches the significant look and suggestive wink Johnny shoots her. She disentangles herself from her girlfriend and slips her arm through his. “Well. I won’t bite, promise, but let’s go find someone who will!”

Before John can protest, she starts to lead him back towards the house. He follows after her, laughing and finding that he’s loose and relaxed enough that just going along with this feels like a perfectly acceptable idea.

The girl - she never bothers to introduce herself, and it doesn’t seem to matter - tugs him over to the kitchen, where they do two shots of tequila, one right after the other. It’s gross, worse even than Alex’s vodka, but it settles warmly in his stomach.

They bounce around the party from one conversation and huddle and party game to the next; she seems to have no qualms about butting into whatever is happening around them, and drags John into it too. Soon enough, the weed and the alcohol hit him properly, and his brain reaches that wonderful, fuzzy, dizzying state where everything is moving fast and slow at once. 

He’s having a fucking great time, finding himself in a lovely cycle where the more he relaxes and opens up, the more fun he has - and all of a sudden he’s just another guy at a party, shooting the shit, and not some repressed, awkward kid totally out of his depth.

“See that guy over there?” the girl prompts, making a rather too obvious motion with her eyes across the room. John looks over, catches sight of a tall guy with olive skin and stunning dark almond eyes standing in a small group. The guy glances over, holds his gaze for a moment, and then lets his lips curl up into a questioning smile.

Fuck, he’s stunning.

“Yeah?” he says, a little roughly, as he tears his eyes away.

“He’s in one of my classes - and I don’t think he’s taken his eyes off you for the last five minutes.”

“Oh!” John immediately flushes, but the mood he’s in gives him enough courage to glance up again - and right back into those deep eyes. This time John risks a smile of his own, and he sees an eyebrow raise in response. 

“Interested?” she purrs.

“Um.” John allows himself to make a selfish decision. “Yeah, totally.”

“Then come on!”

She grabs his hand and tugs him forward again, and for a terrifying second John thinks she’s just going to walk over and introduce him. But she leads him out into the crowd of people dancing in the cleared space in the middle of the living room.

“Gotta reel him in, honey,” she says as she gets him moving. “Be patient. Let him come to you.”

Now, this is advice he can get behind. Even drunk and high, it’s not like he can just _walk up_ to someone.

He feels the eyes on him like a heavy weight as he sways to the music, but it’s pleasant, nothing at all like the uncomfortable lead in his stomach that the attraction towards another boy usually incites. Perhaps it’s easier here, where he’s all but anonymous, where he doesn’t have to worry about word getting back to his father, where the guy he’s interested in is not his best childhood friend or his foster brother. No matter how badly he fucks this up, the stakes are low. Everything will be _fine._

The girl gives him an encouraging smile and a wink, then melts into the crowd of dancing bodies.

He’s on his own, but - for once - he feels like he’s got this.

He throws a quick glance over his shoulder at the stunning boy, a little too embarrassed to make it suggestive. But it seems to do the trick anyway.

A minute later, delicate fingers graze the back of his right arm, and a voice purrs in his ear.

“Hey, gorgeous.”

There’s no hint of mockery. It sounds like he _means_ it.

The guy is right behind him, moving to the music with him, trailing his fingers up along his bicep. John can’t find his voice - that’s asking far too much right now - but he dares another glance over his shoulder and flashes a coy smile.

“Was hoping you’d wanna dance with me,” the boy murmurs.

There’s something about having this guy behind him, out of sight, that makes John feel a little too exposed, too vulnerable. So he turns around, musters every ounce of courage he can scrounge up, and puts a hand on the guy’s shoulder like it’s the millionth time he’s done it and it’s no big deal and - fuck, he’s actually doing this?

He hums an affirmation around a tight throat and a racing heartbeat.

The smile he gets in return is delighted and - hungry. That’s the only word that occurs to him.

The guy inches closer as they dance, and when John dares to slide his other hand up to his shoulder, he feels tentative fingers touch the side of his ribs and then drift down along the seam of his shirt until they catch at his hip. A trail of goosebumps follows.

Well, fuck, that feels good.

A little corner of John’s brain remains on high alert, waiting for the other shoe to drop - the moment when the lights flash on and the music silences and the boy pulls away with a mocking laugh because John had dared to assume this wasn’t all some elaborate joke. But it doesn't happen. In fact, if anything, the closer he gets, the more he starts to realise the boy he’s touching is a little nervous too. 

That thought gives him courage like nothing else, and he affirms his interest by tightening the grip of his left hand and allowing the right to drift up the rise of the boy’s shoulder, until his fingers are able to reach out and brush the exposed skin at the back of his neck. 

The boy hums as his eyes flutter closed, and a moment later John feels the second hand nudging under the hem of his shirt to tickle the delicate skin of his lower back.

John’s heart skips two beats, then jumps back to life with renewed eagerness. Before he can second guess himself, he steps in closer - close enough that they are touching. He’s really not imagining this. He’s touching a boy. Getting touched by a boy. God hasn’t struck him down. No one is taunting or laughing or shouting slurs or threatening him with a one-way trip to hell. In fact, it seems like no one even _cares._

No one - except the boy, who responds to his closeness by tightening his fingers eagerly and leaning his head in a little closer. When John slides his hand further up his neck, drawing him in, their foreheads press together.

In an instant, he is back in that moment a year ago - the moment that has haunted him, damned him, twisted him inside out - when Alex’s nose had brushed his and Alex’s lips, all promise, all _sin,_ had been just the barest tilt of his chin away. John has imagined every permutation of that night a hundred times, in his wakeful hours as well as deep in his dreams. He was right to restrain himself, even if he’s regretted it every single day since. But he hasn’t been this close to a do-over before.

He doesn’t know how to ask for a kiss, so he doesn’t - instead, he tilts his chin up, just like he’s imagined doing a million times, and feels the real brush of soft lips against his own. It’s barely a kiss - more of a graze of lips - but it’s the most sensual thing John has ever experienced.

After a moment, the guy shifts his mouth away, but only so that they can lock eyes.

“Oh, baby,” he murmurs, stroking a thumb against John’s hip. “Do that again. Properly.”

John leans in without hesitation the second time, pressing his closed lips more firmly against the boy’s. He feels the mouth shift into a smile as the fingers at his back dig in more earnestly, tugging John closer so that their hips are flush. For a moment John is sure he’s just imagining the firm little nudge there.

“Now you’re just teasing me,” the boy breathes against his lips, laughing softly and rolling his groin forward and - no, John is _not_ imagining that. Holy shit. This boy is getting hard because of _him._

He slides his hand further up the neck, until his fingers start to weave into the thick, soft hair. He brings the boy’s forehead down to his again.

“Oh yeah?” he whispers back, the first thing he’s managed to say since they started touching.

“Yeah.” A low purr. Another slow, intent grind of the hips. 

He doesn’t recognise the version of himself whose own cock twitches as he says, “What are you gonna do about it?”

“Baby,” the boy whispers against his lips, and slides his fingertips just inside the waistband of his pants, “I’m gonna kiss you until you’re the one begging for more.”

An entirely pleasant shiver of anticipation runs down his spine as he raises one eyebrow in challenge - and then he loses his cockiness and most of his senses when the boy leans into him, forces their lips into a tight press, and inhales sharply like he wants to consume him. The strength ebbs out of his legs when an insistent tongue prods forward, but he grips on tighter to the boy’s neck and shoulder for balance and parts his lips to accept it.

He remembers the skin-crawling discomfort then he’d done this with Martha, but that’s entirely absent here. It’s searing. Sensual. Overwhelmingly too much and not even close to enough. Just - right in every way.

Some deep-seated instinct takes over, one that even all those endless hours in a church pew clearly couldn’t exorcise. He forgets everything else in the world amid the tangle of slick lips and prodding tongues, tight-pressed groins, seeking fingers; forgets how to breathe except to suck the air directly out of this beautiful boy’s lungs. When teeth nip at his lower lip, he groans. For minutes - hours - days - they cleave so tightly to each other than even when they pause for the necessity of catching their breaths, their lips don’t ever lose contact.

They’ve given up on the pretense of dancing, and they seem to realise at the same time that they’re in an awkward position near the middle of the room. The boy doesn’t allow an inch of space to come between their hips or their devouring mouths as he walks backwards towards a darker corner of the room. He is forced to relinquish the contact when he lowers himself to sit down onto the couch, but he keeps his fingers hooked into the loops of John’s jeans and tugs him close at once, so that John drops heavily down on his thighs with his knees bracketing the lean hips.

The hands immediately slide under John’s shirt and up along his waist, and then down his back with a rougher scrape of fingernails. 

In a burst of daring, John shimmies further into his lap, and again he feels the firm press of the boy’s unmistakable interest, an echo of the delicious tightness in the front of his own pants.

“Fuck, baby…” the boy groans, and John realises - he _could._ If he wanted to, he could fuck this guy. Tonight. Just like that. Forever put an end to the joke that is his virginity.

But John knows at once he isn’t ready for that yet. And there’s enough of the responsible, cautious, image-conscious Jack still lingering in the haze of alcohol that he knows it wouldn’t be _smart_ \- and not just because of dad or going to hell or diseases or Alex or-- _No._

Not tonight.

The guy relinquishes his lips but presses hot, wet kisses along his jaw, then buries his face in John’s neck, licking and kissing and sucking in sharp breaths. John moans at this delightful new feeling and tilts his head away to pull the skin tighter, shivering with pleasure as it just improves the sensation. 

The hands on his back drift down in tandem, telegraphing their journey and moving slowly enough that he can stop them if he wants - but he allows the fingers to find the dips of his lower back, then his ass, then to explore along the tight curves there before they dig into the flesh at the backs of his thighs. He tenses the muscles experimentally and the boy grips on tighter, murmurs something delighted into the skin of his neck. All those years in the saddle weren’t a waste, John thinks in a burst of amusement.

He realises after a moment that he’s being selfish, accepting all of these reverent caresses without reciprocating any of his own. 

His hands are braced on the guy’s shoulders. He slides them down, over the prominent collarbones, across the flat chest, and down to the firm abdomen - every inch he travels a new, unexplored territory for his hungry fingers. The boy urges him on with incoherent rumbled words and sighs that he presses into John’s neck - but the further he goes, the closer he gets to… there. He stalls for a moment, toying with the ends of the shirt as the boy’s thighs push desperately up against him from below, trying to decide if he has the courage to actually touch further down.

The sudden buzz in his pocket makes him jerk away with a startled gasp. The boy pulls back too, his eyes wide and confused.

“Oh, sorry,” John says with an embarrassed laugh, remembering the alarm he set for a quarter to midnight. “Gimme a sec, I just need to pretend I’m hitting my curfew.”

He feels the hands on his ass stiffen a little, then withdraw. “Curfew? Wait, how old are you?”

“Nineteen. It’s fine.” He shakes his head. “Strict father.”

The boy laughs with relief. “Naughty. Lying to daddy so you can stay out past your bedtime and play with me.”

John flushes red. He calls an Uber, takes a quick screenshot - he’s smart enough not to copy the tracking link, even if his dad is hopeless with technology - then immediately cancels it again. He pulls up his messaging app, sends his father a quick note to say that he’s heading back, then adds the screenshot. He flips to Alex’s contact and writes him a message too.

_John > staying out another hour _

_John > hope you’re still fine covering for me _

He flips back to his dad and sees the messages have sent, but haven’t been viewed. When he goes back to Alex’s contact, it’s the same thing. Odd. Alex is glued to his phone, and it’s rare for him not to respond right away. Maybe he’s still pissed off - though right now, high on a heady cocktail of hormones, John can’t even properly remember the reason why they’re angry at each other.

He hesitates for a second and then sends one more.

_John > back at the hotel yet? Or out having fun? _

He considers waiting for a reply, but the hands that pulled away from him are back now, caressing along the sides of his thighs impatiently. He slides the phone back into his pocket.

“I liked where you were going with this,” the guy says. He grazes a fingertip along the inside of John’s wrist, then wraps his hand around it gently and presses John’s palm against his own chest. He slowly starts to drag it down. 

John smiles, and when he starts to move downwards of his own accord, the hand around his wrist caresses up the outside of his arm, across his shoulder and to the back of his neck.

“That’s it, baby,” the boy sighs against his lips, then pulls him into another searing kiss as John’s hand catches the top of his pants.

It can’t be that different to touching himself, John figures, and musters up a burst of daring to allow his palm to glide down and curve gently around the bulge in the boy’s pants. 

The boy moans against his mouth and arches his hips up into his hand, and John thinks - holy fuck, he’s touching another guy’s dick. Again he waits for the world to end, but it just feels fucking amazing.

He gives an experimental firmer squeeze and the boy grunts and thrusts up into it, a reaction so sudden and raw that John is almost certain it’s not fake. Wow. _Wow._ How is it possible that he’s having this effect?

He curls his fingers around the outline of the erection, trying a mix of harder presses and more teasing strokes, and it all seems to work like a charm. In a minute he feels the thighs below him tensing and trembling, twitching up eagerly. 

The boy takes one hand off his buttocks and grips into the hair at the base of his skull, then tugs hard and uses the leverage to pull John back down into a kiss. It’s… 

A flash of discomfort runs through him. This he _doesn’t_ like - the pull on his scalp, the feeling of being held down. He feels trapped for a moment before he allows himself to sink into the lips and tongue - but the wary Jack surfaces in his mind again, and that stops him melting fully back into the moment.

The boy makes just enough space between their faces so that he can pierce John with a burning stare. “You wanna come upstairs with me, gorgeous?” he purrs. “I’m dying to see that tight ass without these jeans in the way.”

That’s - no. Too much. A cold flush of panic hits, unbidden, and John feels the way his body stiffens up defensively before he can suppress the reaction. It’s just a little like when his dad summons him into his study unexpectedly, and John doesn’t know if he’s in trouble again or if he’s just in for another round of subtle taunts and instructions on how to be the unattainably perfect son. 

The boy must sense the change in his mood. “Or, hey, we can just hang out here, yeah?”

John nods.

“Sure thing, baby.” He doesn’t sound upset or angry, and he releases John’s hair, and immediately John feels much better again. He smiles his wordless gratitude.

When the boy nudges up against John’s hand a moment later, he remembers what he was doing and resumes his fumbling, teasing caresses. The boy tilts his head back now, groaning softly, and John leans one hand on his shoulder so that he can get a better angle with the other one. He finds a rhythm - hand pressing along the length, his own hips grinding down in tandem - that gets the boy panting and clutching at the backs of his legs, and then trembling again, and then the boy gasps and jerks below him and then lets out a long, low groan of relief. 

“Fucking hell,” the boy murmurs. He tugs John forward again, but only to bury his face in the hollow of his shoulder as he catches his breath. “Fuck, baby. Wow. You’re like heaven.”

John laughs breathlessly like that, delighted at everything that’s just happened but most of all at genuine rough pleasure in the boy’s voice. _He_ did that. He is good for something.

The boy takes another moment to recover, and then his mouth finds the strong sinews down the side of his neck again, kissing and nipping. “I wanna touch you, baby,” the boy murmurs, trailing fingers up the front of his thigh suggestively. “Return the favour, since you were so good to me.”

“Oh, no, it’s okay,” John says quickly, torn between the heedless, needy churn in his groin and the increasingly loud claxon of worry in his head. He’s had so many firsts already that he doesn’t need to add getting jerked off in public to the list just yet.

“You sure?”

He scrunches up his eyes, caught in the middle of this impossible decision. Then the back of the boy’s knuckle grazes against the tightly pulled denim near his groin, and the little vibration is enough to make him let out a choked moan. His left hand flies down to pull the boy’s fingers away.

“Oh, hey, sorry,” the boy says at once, and the spell around them breaks a little. He pulls his hand out of John’s grip. “No means no. Shit. Sorry.”

John laughs, a little giddy, a little apologetic. “No, it’s fine, seriously. It’s all just… a lot.”

With the mood cooling rapidly, John sits back more comfortably on the boy’s legs and props his hand on his own thighs. The guy tilts his head and smiles up at him. “I can’t quite figure you out, baby.”

“Oh?”

“This whole… shy thing. It’s not just an act, is it?”

John goes bright red at once and scrunches up half his face. “Um.”

The boy laughs. “No, no, I like it! Just, not a lot of guys who look like _you_ actually mean it.”

John goes even redder. How can he even begin to explain? His upbringing, his constant confusion about who he’s supposed to be, all the pressures that don’t leave time to have these sorts of formative experiences, how the church tried to beat this out of him and how his dad might just try, too, if he ever finds out - though he’d use the scalpel of targeted threats and insults and incentives to slice it out of him, letting John wallow in every ounce of shame for being this way even though he swears he wouldn’t be if he had any control over it--

He _can’t_ explain it, so he just shrugs. 

“Hey, you’ll get there,” the boy says. “It’s not a race.”

Oddly enough, this reassures him. “Thanks. And - I mean, this was--” He laughs again. “A lot of fun.”

He’s getting uncomfortable where he’s perched now, so he shifts off the boy’s lap and onto the couch beside him. The boy moves too.

“I better go take care of this mess,” he teases, glancing down at his groin, then puts a hand on John’s cheek and turns John to face him. “Do me a favour though.” John raises an eyebrow and smiles, and the boy leans in - not to kiss him, but to whisper in his ear. “Think about me later, when you’re making a mess of your own.”

With a wink and a knowing smile, he gets up and vanishes into the crowd. 

A hot tingle spreads down the insides of his thighs. John lets out a long breath and digs the heels of his hands into his eye sockets.

Now that he’s alone again, his mind resumes its confused, intoxicated war against itself, because kissing a boy for the first time has just confirmed all of his darkest fears and dashed his faintest hopes. On the one side of the battle is the part of him that’s all Jack, and his dad, and nineteen and a half years of conditioning telling him he’s just done something unforgivable. On the other is a quiet but firm voice saying that everything’s fine, that _he’s_ just fine, even if he is - fuck! - gay for sure. He hasn’t properly doubted it for years now, but there was always the chance that he’d kiss a boy and get that same tingle of revulsion he’d felt after poor Martha.

His throbbing groin and singing skin say otherwise.

He needs a smoke.

Johnny finds him ten minutes later, out in the yard again, taking the last few drags of his joint. John relinquishes the final bit to him.

“Hey kid,” Johnny says through a mouthful of smoke. “You doing all right?”

John nods. He sees the way Johnny is studying him from the corner of his eye. “What?”

“Looked like you were having fun,” Johnny says casually. “He didn’t push too far, did he?”

“Nah.” John shakes his head, but he’s not thinking about the boy right now. He turns to look at Johnny. “Did it work?” 

“Did what work?”

“The summer camp thing.”

“Oh.” Johnny laughs. “No. At least not in the way they hoped.” He sucks at the last little stub of the joint. “Just taught me how to hide it better.”

“Hide what?”

“Being different.”

John sighs. So much for that. He’s quiet for a moment, then says, vehemently, “I hate it.” Johnny doesn’t push him to explain, but it floods up anyway past the thickness in his throat. “I hate that I _am_ different and I hate that _being_ different is such a fucking problem. I hate _all_ of it. Our parents. The south. The fucking bigotry and how afraid they are of anything that doesn’t fit their neat little boxes.”

Johnny’s hand grips his shoulder sympathetically. He chuckles. “Hey, how much have you been smoking?”

“It’s not that,” John says with a pout, though undoubtedly the weed has made him more philosophical. “I just wanna spend one night without my dad’s voice in the back of my mind. Fuck. I just can't deal with him anymore.”

“Then don’t.” He looks up at Johnny, who shrugs like it’s the most obvious thing. “You’re coming to college soon, right? Take a critical thinking class - no, I mean it. It’ll teach you how to find the difference between what everyone else is telling you to think and what’s actually right for you.”

John sighs. That’s not the point - he’s pretty sure he understands right from wrong. “It doesn’t matter what I _think._ I can’t change dad. The problem is all this fucking legacy.”

“Legacy?” Johnny scoffs. “Big talk from _your_ father.”

“Fuck off.” Shit. Why is his first instinct always to go on the defensive? “You’re just lucky your dad isn’t in politics.”

Johnny shrugs, his frown a little darker now. “Doesn’t make him any less of an asshole.”

“At least your mom’s not dead.”

“True,” Johnny says neutrally.

“And at least you’re not… Not… fucking--” He still can’t say the _word_ out loud. 

Johnny reads between the lines. “Also true.”

The simple, unpitying understanding drains his anger. “Sorry. Now I’m being a dick.”

“Hey, Jackie, it’s okay,” Johnny says, and then there are arms around his shoulders, solid and safe. 

“I’m just so tired,” he mumbles into the shirt.

“I think it’s time to head home, right?”

“No, I meant--”

“I know what you meant.” And John is sure he does - they all carry their own invisible, impossible burdens wherever they go. Even now, he feels how they’ve settled into all the ridges of his spine, been grafted into his flesh. The notion that he could put them down for a whole evening is laughably naive.

“I should call an Uber.”

Johnny stands with him as he pulls out his phone and calls a car - still no reply from dad, or from Alex - then walks him around to the front of the house and waits with him in companionable silence.

Just as his Uber is arriving, Johnny pulls him into a final hug and claps him on the back.

“You wanna know a secret?” he says into John’s ear.

John hums.

“They’re _all_ fucked up.”

“What?”

Johnny pulls back and looks at him. “My folks. Your dad. The Kinlochs and Austins and everyone at church and all the rest. _All_ of them. In my experience, the harder someone is pushing to pretend everything is normal, the bigger their skeletons are.”

John frowns at him. The implications of that, if it was true, would be pretty damning.

“You know what I mean - how the pro-life bigots end up buying all their mistresses abortions, or the most homophobic politicians get caught at gay orgies? The people who are fucked up on the outside are the safe ones. It’s the ones who are fighting to _look_ normal that you need to keep an eye on.”

“Right,” John says, and dismisses all of this immediately as outlandish drunken banter. Too much of his worldview would need to change for him to even entertain this.

Johnny laughs, sounding a little resigned. “Well, I’ll see you soon, Jackie. Just a few more months and you’ll be a free man.”

John smiles a bit more warmly at that. “Can’t wait.”

But when he climbs into the back of the car and closes his eyes, he wonders about that. Freedom might be nice, in its own way, but what would his life be for if he didn’t have all his duties to give it meaning?


	2. Nighttime visitors

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This prompt came from our friend Poli, who likely didn’t know she’d inspire this chaos - nevertheless I hope she enjoys!

Alex may have talked big to John about being used to drinking, and he may not have been entirely lying, but he’ll never get used to - or, he suspects, get around - the fragmented and feverish sleep that heavy drinking condemns him to. A beer or two and he’s buzzed; a little vodka chased with mixer and he can still sleep soundly; but after tonight’s binge, he’s certain real rest will evade him.

He lies splayed on his bed, his door closed firmly, with the covers kicked off. He still has one hand around himself, can feel the come on his skin cooling and going tacky. But that’s something to worry about in the morning. 

He has so much to worry about in the morning.

Alex wipes his hand clean on the inside of his pyjama pants and rolls onto his side, his jaw loose and his mouth open wide in an exaggerated rendition of deep sleep, as though performing it will invite it.

He wakes up to the creaking of mattress springs and the press of a knee in the small of his back, the soft whooshing sound of bedcovers being lifted and replaced. He lies completely still, his eyes open but seeing only vague, static darkness.

A hand finds the nape of his neck and the highest bump of his spine. The fingers trail downwards until the collar of his t-shirt is stretched taut, the front digging hard into his throat. The fingers continue their languid path down his spine, and the collar digs in deeper and sharper until he feels his eyelids drooping. He doesn’t know why he hasn’t cried out yet, rolled over or struggled.

The hand withdraws, his collar loosens and stale air fill his lungs again.

The person behind him either doesn’t realise he is awake, or doesn’t care. The same hand - and he knows it’s the same one, because the other is on the back of his thigh, squeezing the taut flesh through the cloth - creeps under the waistband of his pyjama pants. 

He moans into the heavy silence when a hot, tight hand wraps around him and pulls agonisingly slowly up his length. A mouth presses to the tense lines in the back of his neck.

“Can’t be quiet even now?” John murmurs fondly into Alex’s skin.

He isn’t surprised John is here, doing what he is, touching him like this.

He shakes his head frantically. “No. Not if you don’t--”

John laughs again, indulgent and fond. He tightens his grip, miraculously slick, around Alex’s desperately hard cock. “I’m here, I’m here,” he murmurs sweetly, and his touch is perfection. Hot and tight, his strokes slow but firm. It’s a world away from the biting, dry friction of his own frantic grip earlier.

He writhes in the embrace as John’s free hand goes back to the collar of Alex’s t-shirt, grips a bunch of the fabric and pulls hard enough to make Alex gasp. Everything is tight and suffocating, like he’s being squeezed from all sides by John’s body, John’s fist, his own clothing, his own blankets. It’s glorious and he doesn’t want it to end, but he’s so close to _finishing_.

He’s saying ‘Jack’ over and over, in as strong a voice he can muster with the collar of his shirt digging in so hard. 

“Jackie, please - _please_. I’m so close, Jack!”

The hand on his cock squeezes harder, pulls him closer. John’s teeth catch a little flesh just below his ear, where there’s barely enough to bite.

“I’ve got you, I’ve got you.” And he whispers it like a mantra, over and over until it’s singing under Alex’s skin and he can see the words dancing in the thick darkness around him. He comes into John’s hand with a choked groan, and his vision goes white for a breathless flash as all the air leaves his lungs and the blood rushes from his brain.

He’s made a mess of both of them. John just pulls his hand out of Alex’s pants and smears it clean on the heaving plane of Alex’s exposed chest, where his shirt has ridden up. 

He can suddenly breathe again, without the vicious dig of his own collar at his throat, with John’s hand stroking loving circles into his hip. He wants to roll over, to find John’s hardness amongst the bedding and return the favour, but the arms that hold him are too strong, and they keep him entirely restrained. He hasn’t even seen John’s face yet, felt only glimpses of it pressed into the nape of his neck or his cheek. He falls asleep before he can muster the strength to resist John’s hold and to touch him in the way he’s just been touched.

\---

John’s hold is so unyielding that Alex is shocked awake when it relinquishes him. 

He finds himself barefoot on the polished marble floor of the downstairs entranceway, alone and shivering in the empty darkness. 

No, not empty. Someone is watching.

His knee jerk instinct is to seek out the safety of John’s touch, to have John’s arms around him again. He jogs up the staircase two steps at a time, his feet making hardly a sound on the cold tile. 

The upstairs landing is unfamiliar in the complete darkness. Alex’s heart hammers as he gropes around blindly for the door to John’s bedroom. He can’t find it. Every corner he searches is empty but for more pitch darkness, and when he finally wraps his hand around the icy handle of a door, it’s only to feel an overwhelming sense of apprehension about what must be behind it.

None of these rooms feel right. He sprints down miles of dark hallway, and every room he passes is practically pulsing with the same tangible sense of anger and foreboding. His breathing echoes around him like the whispering of someone hiding just out of sight, behind one of these doors. He keeps running, but there’s the inescapable sense that someone is directly behind him - almost stepping on his heels as he sprints down the hallway with breathless desperation.

When he trips over the threshold of one of these doorways, something within hums awake with angry purpose. He’s certain that if whatever is behind him doesn’t catch him, the thing ahead will.

\---

He blinks awake and props himself up onto his elbows, squinting through the darkness and then down at the sleeping form beside him. He’s in John’s bedroom, and though he doesn’t quite know how he came to be here, it doesn’t occur to him to question it. Sleepwalking, probably.

He doesn’t know how long he’s been asleep. The warm stickiness on his chest and thighs is gone, so it might have been hours. 

His heart begins to pound again, hammering like the frantic beating of wings, a bird trapped under his ribcage. John is fast asleep on his back, shirtless, skin dark and gleaming in the low light. Craving the reassurance of touch after the dream he’s just had, Alex presses himself close and runs a tentative palm over the firm muscle of his chest, remembering how John had woken him with a hand curling around the nape of his neck. He can feel the touch if he thinks about it hard enough, the pressure of each finger against the tender skin.

He lets his thumb catch once over a dark nipple and bites gently at the baby smooth skin of John’s throat, chasing the tiny pink marks he leaves with his tongue.

John groans in his sleep and arches his back off the bed. The duvet slips off him and Alex takes in strong, sinewy thighs, a dark expanse of firm abdomen. 

“Jackie?” he murmurs, and steels himself - then swings a leg over John’s hip to straddle him. John gives a drowsy moan, one hand pressed to his face, the other sliding languidly down his abdomen towards his crotch.

Alex catches his wrist before it can reach its target and leans forward, pressing John’s warm hand to his cheek, nuzzling and mouthing at the bumps of his knuckles. These hands are as broad and strong as his father’s, but capable of soft touches Henry would never bestow. As of tonight, Alex also knows the pleasure and pain they’re just as adept at inflicting. 

He presses one of his own hands to the front of John’s boxers, cupping the semi-hard cock stirring there. He wishes he could see better, to make out more than the hardest lines of John’s body and appreciate the softness he knows is there too. He tugs at the waistband of John’s boxers, lets the elastic catch under his erection.

John stirs. Alex presses the warm palm harder against his own cheek and wraps a hand around him - John’s cock is searingly hard now and standing up against his stomach. He leans down to press his mouth to the soft, sweat-damp throat again.

“Jackie?”

John’s eyes open. The whites gleam in the blue-black darkness. 

“‘Lex?” 

His voice is hoarse and bewildered. That sleepy, interested purr has vanished. 

Alex opens his mouth against John’s throat and makes a tight circle with his fist, dragging it up John’s length to catch at the leaking tip. A hand seizes his wrist, stopping him abruptly.

“What-- What are you doing?” 

He meets John’s eyes through the darkness, and from where his mouth is pressed to John’s throat, they’re looking at each other from so severe an angle that both their eyes must be aching at the strain. 

“I’m returning the favour,” Alex whispers, his tone rising a little at the end like he’s asking a question. Isn’t John pleased to see him? 

But John scrambles up onto his elbows, nearly dislodging him, and stares down at where Alex is lying across him with unguarded fear.

“I locked my door to keep you _out!_ What are you _doing?”_

Alex tries to catch John’s face between his palms; he’s inexplicably dizzy and now John seems like the only real thing in the world. If he can just _touch_ , he knows John will understand, will remember--

“I’ve always been here!” Alex whimpers, but suddenly he’s shivering and confused. “Or, no - you came to _me_.”

John wrenches his face out of Alex’s grasp and scrambles backwards, finally managing to dislodge Alex from his sprawl over John’s thighs. He pulls his limbs away from where Alex can reach them, drawing his knees to his chest and gripping the wall with an outstretched arm. 

“What are you talking about?” Then John’s eyes widen in horror. He clutches a hand to his throat, where Alex had pressed his lips to smooth, unmarred skin only moments earlier. “What have you _done,_ Alex?”

A hot dribble of blood works its way out from under his fingers and down his throat, like a spring bursting forth from unassuming earth. 

“You _bit_ me!” John gasps.

Alex laughs. This _has_ to be some kind of joke. He remembers the tiny marks his teeth left - not even enough to bruise, let alone break skin. But John is staring at him like he’s seeing him for the first time, and his expression is the furthest thing in the world from teasing or amused. 

And - he isn’t looking Alex in the eyes. He’s staring at his mouth.

Alex raises a hand to his lips and licks them. Tastes metal. His fingers come away sticky and black in the near darkness. 

He scrambles to wipe his hand clean. Blood. _John’s_ blood. He hacks and spits red onto the clean white linens, but better he sully them than taste John for a second longer. 

“You’re my _brother_!” John is saying, over and over, the words come out like he’s choking on them, heaving them up from some place deep in his chest. 

Alex wants to scream. “You came for me!” he gasps from a dry, coppery mouth. “I didn’t do that! I didn’t-- I didn’t mean to--”

But trying to defend himself from John’s panicked accusations is pointless. Even through the darkness, he can see the blood running thicker and faster down John’s throat, his hand no longer able to staunch the flow. He’s breathing heavily, letting go of his throat to wipe his hands frantically, pointlessly, off on the sheets before clutching at the place the blood is springing from again.

Alex watches, stock still and terrified, as John raises his head and stares at him, his eyes eating up his face. “There’s too much!” he sobs, an awful, ragged sound.

Alex scrambles forward and lifts the hem of his t-shirt to press it to the spot the blood is pulsing from. It throbs over his fingers like a liquid heartbeat. He gags but holds tighter. 

“There’s too much!” John is whispering, “There’s just too much!”

Alex shakes his head. “No, no-- Hold my shirt-- We can still--”

John freezes. One hand snaps out with eerie deftness for someone gushing blood from their throat and grips Alex’s wrist hard. “You need to drink it,” John says, deathly calm and intent all of a sudden. “It’s the only way.”

Alex opens his mouth to protest - _drink it?_ He’ll never be able to, there’s just too much of it! He tries to shake his head, but John squeezes tighter.

“You wanted this. You _did_ this!” he snarls furiously. “Fix it!”

John’s face is twisted with rage, and even as Alex tries to crane his neck back, to put as much distance as he can between his mouth and the sticky mess of dark blood now covering John’s torso, John drags him forward and holds him tight.

“You need to do this! I’m bleeding out, and you’re _wasting_ it! I have so much, and you need all you can get. Come _on_!”

And Alex finally succumbs to the pressure of John’s grip, allowing himself to be pressed face first to the gleaming red expanse of smooth, bloody skin. He opens his mouth, presents his tongue just as before, _when he’d caused this_ , and lets John spill into his mouth. 

John is gasping and clutching the back of his shirt with shaking fingers, so soaked with blood that Alex soon feels the skin under the points of contact growing sticky. He’s swallowing frantically, his eyes screwed shut as the blood pumps hot and steady into his mouth. 

There’s too much, and he can barely breathe for trying not to choke on it. On John’s blood. He clings to his brother, swallowing for dear life, and finally the room is silent but for John’s heavy breathing and the wet, frantic noises of Alex’s throat constricting--

He starts awake, asleep one instant and fully conscious the next. He’s in his own bed, huddled against the wall with the sheets tangled around his legs, his t-shirt caught under him so that the collar tugs slightly at his throat.

He feels sick. In a flash of blind panic, he touches his mouth and rubs hard, then looks down at his hand. Clean. He runs his tongue around his mouth. It tastes like spirits and stale breath. Better than blood.

Texture returns to the world and he knows he’s finally, really awake again.

He’s going to throw up. 

Alex kicks free of the bedclothes and tears from his room, his bare feet skidding across the wooden floor in the hallway and stinging from the friction.

There’s almost nothing in his stomach to throw up, but dry heaving feels penitent, feels cathartic. He indulges for a few minutes, letting his body expel pathetic amounts of boozy-smelling saliva, before he sinks back onto his knees and closes his eyes.

He should be relieved that there’s nothing in his stomach to throw up - that he hasn’t expelled gallons of something dark and hot and coppery. But there’s no relief to be found, not when he remembers how perversely good John’s illicit touch felt, and how good it was to touch in return. But even in his dreams, which should be a landscape for Alex to indulge in the sorts of desires he can’t realise in his real life, the consequences felt all too real. 


	3. Henry and Carlos

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Requested to resounding support by Poli on Instagram!
> 
> \---
> 
> This scene takes place at the end of July in Alex's first year with the Laurenses (around the beginning of chapter 10).

Carlos is catastrophically late to his meeting with Henry. Of course he is. His entire life is in flames, so why not also set fire to the only life raft keeping him afloat?

He spends a good ten minutes fighting with the hotel receptionist before she lets him go up. Then he almost falls into the room in his haste, sweaty from the late-July heat and the fear of what’s about to come his way. Henry looks up abruptly at the noisy interruption from where he is sitting at the table, working on his laptop. He’s taken his suit coat off and thrown it across a chair. He looks tired, but despite that, he looks stern and focused. As always. Carlos can’t even imagine him relaxing, or sleeping.

Henry isn’t going to be pleased, not with Carlos’ lateness, nor with the information - or lack thereof - that he has to show for two months of work.

“I-- Uh, got held up in the lobby,” Carlos mutters, shoving his hands in his pockets. It’s not a lie, exactly, but he could have been on time if he hadn’t been waiting around outside his building for the dealer that never showed.

“You’re late,” Henry says, not looking up. He never looks tense when he’s angry, because his displeasure is never internalised. Henry’s anger is cathartic for him; controlled. 

Carlos scowls. He wishes that, for once, a simple explanation would be enough for his foster father. “Yeah, I just told you. I got held up in the lobby. We don’t usually come to this hotel, so they didn’t recognise me.”

“And you are operating under the delusion that your time is more valuable than mine, are you?”

Carlos moves further into the room to stand at the end of the bed, fidgeting. “I’m sorry, sir,” he grits out. Henry doesn’t want an answer, just unflinching subservience.

“That’s just not good enough anymore.” Henry sighs and closes his laptop. There’s something frighteningly definitive about the statement, punctuated with a sigh and the click of the laptop screen. “You had best have some good news for me.”

Carlos sits down on the end of the bed with his shoulders hunched, avoiding Henry’s eyes. He hasn’t got shit for him, and he wishes he could say it wasn’t for lack of trying. Really, he hasn’t been  _ able _ to even try lately. Four weeks ago, the prescription that Henry usually punctually renews ran out. Ever since, he’s been scrounging hits from steadily seedier sources and fighting to stay lucid at his desk job.

“Uh, yeah I guess I got some stuff from the contact in the rep's office.”

Five names, two of which he’d had already and one he’d suspected. By now, he’s sure the information is outdated anyway - the small group of Carolina republicans who are trying to form a voting block are slippery. This political world moves too fucking fast.

Henry sighs again, low and tense. “Come here.”

Carlos doesn’t move. He watches Henry with narrowed eyes. 

“Carlos. At once.” 

Henry’s volume doesn’t change, but the tone slips into a more dangerous register.

Carlos gets to his feet and walks slowly over, until he’s standing directly beside Henry. He can’t meet his eyes, but instead stares over his shoulder with his jaw clenched.

“Are you slow-witted, boy? Sit. Show me what you have.”

It was a coin flip, really, between being told to sit down and being told to get on his knees. Somehow, even the dreaded former - which means showing Henry just how little he’s accomplished - is better than the other option.

Carlos sits down with a stony expression and fumbles around in his bag for a few moments, pulls out a single, rather thin manilla folder. He puts it in front of Henry and sits back, folding his arms.

“I didn’t have much time.”

Henry’s expression darkens as he starts to pick up that not all is well. He doesn’t touch the folder, but instead fixed Carlos with a piercing, judgemental stare.

“Two months.”

Carlos scowls. “Yes, but I was working in Columbia for all of July, and I couldn’t get close enough to-- I mean, I didn’t have an opportunity to dig around here in Charleston.’

“You had  _ two months _ !” Henry yells, slamming his hand on the table with terrible force. “And all you have to show for yourself - is this?” He picks up the folder, but instead of opening it, he flings it across the room. The papers sail away in all directions.

Carlos flinches back at the sudden movement and watches Henry with a mixture of fear and stubborn indignance. He’s weathered this kind of rage before, had the bruises on his hips and legs to show for it. It would be in his best interests to let it happen again now. But somehow, even though he knows letting Henry push him onto the bed and do his worst would take the edge off his anger, he feels nauseous at the very thought. 

“You didn’t exactly make it clear for me,” he mutters instead, trying to put up defences. “‘Find out what the Republican congressmen are doing’? What’s that even supposed to mean?”

The instructions  _ were _ specific enough that Carlos had known the circle he should have been investigating - a small, liberal minority of reps that had been planning to block one of Henry’s measures in the house, led by the congressman from the Charleston district.

Henry shoots up out of his chair, looming over Carlos. “You insolent brat. How dare you blame this on me? I am  _ more _ than done with your pathetic excuses!”

Carlos gets to his feet too, taking a few hasty steps back to widen the distance between them. He despises the idea of Henry thinking he’s frightened, but he’s grown out of just taking it when Henry talks down to him, grown out of remaining silent while he’s subjected to this vitriol.

He knows it’s stupid to fight back, but without the pills to steady and focus him, he feels twitchy and reckless and raw.

“And  _ I’m _ more than done with being called up every three months and told to go fuck some ancient senator for barely enough money to cover half a month’s rent!”

Henry’s jaw is set in a hard, unforgiving line and he gestures furiously at Carlos, incredulity and rage apparent in the force of his movement. “If you cannot even figure out how to complete this exceedingly simple task, then do not presume to understand my strategy here! You’re lucky I give you even this much to do, given your shameful record.”

Henry usually keeps his anger in better check than this. Fuck. This is not good. 

“Maybe,” Carlos growls, stepping forward now -his fear has melted quickly to overwhelming anger that he just can’t tamp down. “if you gave me something more useful than these stupid two-month long, small-scale missions? I’ve been doing this shit for years now, and you’ve haven’t even  _ mentioned _ anything bigger than this.”

“ _ Bigger _ than this?” Henry says mockingly, advancing and kicking a piece of paper aside. “You can’t even  _ handle _ this. You have proven yourself to be good for very little, boy.”

Carlos glares up at him. They’re close now, and Carlos has grown since he was a scrawny sixteen-year-old in Henry’s care. They’re almost equals in height, and he can see every tense line in Henry’s face, the dark threat in his eyes.

“You haven’t exactly been good to any of your promises either,” he spits through gritted teeth. And he isn’t thinking of college, of a steady job, not even this fucking prescription. He’s thinking of a hand on his shoulder in Henry’s study and the wordless affirmation in the touch.  _ I’m proud of you. _ He’s thinking of Henry pressed hard down the line of his back, one hand tangled in his hair, telling him how good he felt. 

He hadn’t wanted to be fucked, but there was a perverse kind of affection there.

“Oh, no, never promises,” Henry sneers, stepping even closer. “Rewards. To be earned.”

_ This _ just isn’t fucking good enough anymore. What more damage does Carlos have to take, how much more of himself does he have to give, before  _ any _ of these supposed rewards are realised?

It’s almost like Henry was always planning to keep shifting the goalposts.

He stands his ground. “So what have the past four fucking years earned me? Because if this is it--”

“You are starting to sound rather ungrateful for the roof over your head, boy. Be careful that you do not make me reconsider even this.”

_ The roof over his head?  _ Carlos rooms with three other guys he hardly knows, and Henry holds rent money over his head on  _ endless _ conditions. 

“Reconsider what?” he snarls. “ _ Not  _ sending me to any of the good colleges I could have easily gotten into?  _ Not  _ giving me the opportunity to be more than some fucking favour you pass around to your friends in D.C.?”

Henry’s face twists in rage, and unlikely, discordant satisfaction twists in Carlos’ gut at having cracked that cool exterior.

“I gave you  _ every _ opportunity!” Henry growls, raising his voice, jabbing his finger forward. “Every advantage. Tolerated every delay, every failure, every expense. And all you had to do was show your potential! But, what - did you become too spoiled? Too self-important for hard work? You have been useless -  _ less _ that useless. A drain on my time, my energy, my resources. You have no idea the generosity I am showing you, even now. And this is the thanks I get?”

Carlos takes a step backwards now - his expression growing panicked - but new indignance swells in him at these accusations. “ _ Thank you? Generosity?  _ What, for you being the first one to have a turn the fucking  _ second _ I was legal? You were never going to give me anything more than this, were you?”

Henry shakes his head, incredulous rather than negating. “At least you are usable in that one respect.”

“Oh, I am  _ so _ glad to hear that, what a relief!” Carlos spits.

Henry loosens his tie. 

Shit.

“Be glad you have at least this way of keeping yourself off the streets that I scraped you up from.”

Despite its familiarity, the sight of Henry beginning to undress fills him with such a sinking sense of dread that he feels himself taking a step back before he’s fully conscious of the movement. He  _ isn’t _ doing this tonight. The very idea of this man touching him like that, after everything he’s said, is repulsive.

Carlos watches Henry’s movements warily. “If.... If that’s the only way to be useful to you, I don’t know if that’s what I want.”

Henry narrows his eyes threateningly. He begins to unbutton one of his sleeve cuffs. Of course. When has Carlos’ reticence ever dampened his appetite? 

“Oh, your next semester’s tuition is due shortly, is it not?”

Carlos doesn’t move, except to fold his arms tighter and glance over his shoulder at the door. If he leaves now, he isn’t getting money or this prescription - which he desperately needs - but staying feels equally like a condemnation.

“I’m sure you’d have found some excuse to withhold it anyway,” he mutters, glaring at the floor.

“I am giving you the opportunity to earn it back.” Henry begins to work on the other cuff. “But it will not be offered again.”

Carlos shakes his head. Henry’s tone, entirely unabashed, even business-like, is only cementing his instinct to refuse.

“And I’m saying I don’t want to. Is that so hard to understand?”

“Get on the bed.”

Carlos takes another step backwards, and now the defensive anger is blooming again, his heart pounding wildly as he watches Henry roll up his left sleeve.

“No. I’m not a kid anymore, you can’t just - you can’t just order me around.”

“ _ At once _ , boy.”

And something in Henry’s tone has changed this time. Carlos is used to dismissive, mild irritation - Henry treating him like an annoying child that won’t cooperate. This is different. The roughness in Henry’s tone carries real threat; his hands have stilled at his sleeve and the gaze fixed on Carlos is one of barely restrained fury.

It makes him want to submit. Carlos has learnt by now, and he knew it even before Henry, that sometimes it  _ is _ just easier to comply. Refusal begets violence, often worse than compliance does. If there is one thing Carlos does excel at, it’s weighing these outcomes against each other to the tiniest degree.

He glares at the floor, purses his lips. “Give me a minute,” he mutters, turning away. “Gonna use the bathroom.”

Henry scoffs and goes back to loosening his shirt sleeves, cutting an imposing figure against the darkening sky out the window.

Carlos slips into the ensuite, locks the door, and sits on the edge of the bathtub, shivering under the harsh, humming light. He’s been feverish and shaky all day, but the oxys he managed to scrape off a friend last week are running out and he has to ration them if he wants to get through the weekend.

He feels justified in taking one now. He doesn’t have the nerves he used to, it has to be these fucking pills. 

He snorts to himself as he presses the pill into powder on the edge of the sink. How did he ever get through an encounter with Henry without one of these? Hell, the first time it hurt bad enough that some oxys would have been a fucking godsend. 

He snorts the stuff off the edge of the sink and feels it hit instantly, a burning numbness in his nose and throat. Then the sensation recedes, and he’s left feeling clearer and more lucid than he has in days. As though he’s awoken after days of tossing and turning to a fever having broken. 

He splashes his face with cold water, stows the baggie of pills in the toe of his shoe and pushes out of the bathroom. Henry has loosened his collar and sleeves, his tie draped over the back of his desk chair. He sits there, tapping something on his phone.

“Ah.” He looks up, appraises Carlos with a slightly mocking smile. “Have you decided to stop sulking then, boy?”

He can’t muster a response to this. Something about the pill has heightened his surroundings, and Henry seems somehow much taller and the walls much closer than before. He hugs his arms around himself and sits on the edge of the bed without looking at his foster father.

“On the floor, Carlos. I’d like to make some use of your mouth tonight - seeing as, so far, all it has done is make pathetic and impertinent excuses.”

Carlos scrubs a hand down his face, brushes the spot on his lip that’s sore from biting it so hard earlier, and winces. The flash of pain jolts something in him and he looks over at Henry, meets the apparasing gaze with heightening apprehension.

“Do I have to do it like that?” he groans, wondering why Henry has decided to rub salt in the wound of his surrender by ordering him to the floor.

Henry lets out a long-suffering sigh and gets to his feet, approaches the bed slowly and with such unhurried ease that Carlos fears he’s in the mood to drag this out tonight. Already he seems intent on punishing Carlos for his disobedience by inflicting just the sort of humiliation he knows will sting most. It’s a game he should be used to.

Henry reaches out to tilt back his chin with two fingers and looks down at him intently, a small crease appearing between his eyebrows. 

“You’ve gotten quite grown up, haven’t you?” he says quietly, though it doesn’t sound like a compliment. Carlos says nothing, but grits his teeth and Henry pushes his face from side to side, as though inspecting him.

“You used to be so eager to please.” Henry sighs, and Carlos can’t help but get the impression he’s lost in thought, far from this hotel room. He feels like less than an afterthought, sitting here and letting Henry touch him even as he thinks of something else.

He leans away, scowling, and braces his hands on the bed either side of him.

Why is he doing this? Just because  _ Henry _ wants it?

“I don’t have condoms, or lube,” he mutters, even though he’s fairly sure he would find at least the former in his wallet were he to check.

Henry raises his eyebrows. “None of your concern, boy. I am not so disorganised as you. Still, I would think someone such as yourself would have both on hand at all times.”

Carlos shifts away and stands up, wrapping his arms around himself. “I don’t know, I’m sort of sore.”

Henry fixes Carlos with a withering stare, something deeply derisive and contemptuous in his tone. “I will not be told no by a boy who, by his own admission, makes his living sleeping with strangers.”

“And I’m not making anything with you, am I?” Carlos retorts, edging away from Henry to pace between the desk and the window. Just because Henry is his - what? His boss? His foster father? His  _ fucking pimp?  _ That doesn’t mean he has free access whenever he wants.

He hears Henry digging around for something, the crackle of a foil wrapper. “Get on your knees, Carlos. I won’t entertain your tantrums any longer.”

Carlos’s voice raises to a yell. “No! I’m fucking sick of this! Why is it always this way around? Why don’t you ever pay me first, or give me an assignment first? I’m done!”

Henry advances, slow and menacing. “Pay you? For this?” he sneers. “If I were paying, I’d have far better than you.”

Of course he would. He’d have someone  _ willing _ , someone who didn’t detest the act or the person performing it. Carlos has never pretended to be attracted to Henry - or even really to men, in general - but this has done little to prevent either of them from going through with this ridiculous farce.

“If I’m not getting a cent tonight, I’m leaving,” he says obstinately. 

“Perhaps,” Henry growls, “Being rid of you once and for all would be for the best.” But he steps forward.

Carlos watches fearfully, weighs up his options. He frowns and looks towards the door, almost longingly. “You owe me back pay,” he breathes, finally. “If I… If we do this, will you give it to me?”

The knowledge that once he’s suffered through this evening, he’ll be able to live without worrying about rent or food or paying his dealer for at least a few weeks… it sweetens the deal considerably, enough to make this feel almost worth it. 

“Not that you have any footing to negotiate here, boy - but, yes. Now, no more of this hemming and hawing. I have had an exceedingly difficult day.”

Of course. He’s just the vessel for Henry’s angry stress relief. Carlos doesn’t move. 

“And for… for this?” He gestures at the papers Henry threw across the room. “I don’t care if it’s less, but I let that asshole lobbyist fuck me for some of that.”

He regrets adding this detail the moment he’s said it, but it is true. The idea of not being compensated for that encounter (a chilly office in downtown Charleston, pushed up against a filing cabinet and taunted with all manner of insults) makes him feel positively nauseous.

Henry smiles coldly. “Yet you still assert that you are capable of anything more? Yes, I will pay your whore’s fee.”

“Don’t you--Fucking hell, if I’m just some whore, you’re nothing more than a pimp. You expect me to go along with this when you talk to me like that?”

Henry laughs, genuinely surprised. “Were you under the impression that you had proven to be anything more?”

Carlos looks away angrily, blinking against the sudden stinging in his eyes. He can’t deny that this is essentially all he is, a prostitute that sometimes proves themselves vaguely useful with political tidbits. It still stings to hear it said aloud.

“I had potential to be more. Before  _ you _ .”

Henry undoes the next button of his shirt. “Before me, you were less than trash. With me, you could have been truly special. If only you had put enough of your absurd entitlement aside.”

“You’re calling  _ me _ entitled!” Carlos scoffs. He thinks of Henry taking him to a hotel room when he had just turned eighteen, his assumption - proven correct - that Carlos would take it without protesting. The thought that Henry wouldn’t always get his way never occurred to either of them. 

“That doesn’t seem ironic to you?” he spits. “I want a renewal of that prescription too, by the way.” 

Henry’s eyes widen. “You - you, who have done less than nothing for me - have the audacity to ask for more?”

Asking for this prescription feels like the furthest thing from a frivolous request. Henry hooked him up with it a year ago, and these days it’s the only thing that will still his shaking hands and quiet desperate hum that this work induces.

Carlos scowls. “It’s the bare minimum. I need that shit to get any work done.  _ You  _ suggested it.”

“And you squandered it. No. Enough. You get down on the floor this instant or you’ll regret it.”

Carlos shakes his head. “No. I can’t work without that prescription.”

Henry’s expression blackens. “Pathetic. Weak. Thank god that I no longer need to rest my ambitions on your flimsy shoulders.”

The insult entirely passes Carlos over, because Henry’s unwillingness to listen to his continued refusal  _ and _ to provide the prescription has just smacked him squarely in the face. Henry  _ doesn’t  _ care, Henry has no intention of providing any of this. At least, not to the Carlos that bats his eyes and pouts, hesitating over lying down like a good boy. 

His expression darkens to match Henry's. “I’m not leaving without it.”

“No. I will not repeat myself.”

Carlos backs away, his eyes darting between Henry and the door. He still hopes Henry is only trying to call his bluff, and won't actually withhold this prescription, but Carlos isn’t kidding. Without it, he’s getting out.

“Neither will I. I guess we both have to leave here disappointed.” 

He puts belligerent bravado that he doesn’t feel into his voice, and Henry’s tone is far from his usual casual contempt. He fixes Carlos with a stare that, three years ago, would have brought him to his knees. “If you walk out this door before giving me my due, then we are done.  _ You _ are done. I refuse to tolerate this insolence a second longer.”

“If you leave without promising you’ll get me that prescription, you--” Carlos fumbles for a moment, his face colouring with rage. “You’ll regret it.”

“Oh?” Henry says, now darkly amused. Carlos paces past him, wringing his hands as every resentful urge, every bitter thought he’s repressed for the past two years, surges past good sense to form a furious tirade.

“You’re so - so fucking  _ blinded _ by everything you think is normal in these fucked up circles we run in. You don’t know how it would look to everyone else, do you? I don’t give a shit about the press - I know they’d never believe anything bad of you. But I could tell others.”

Henry laughs mockingly and shakes his head, then turns his back. “Is that so?”

“What would your circle of rich friends think?” Carlos hisses, thinking gleefully of spreading his secret among the condescending middle-aged socialites he used to mix with at functions. “What would your children think? Your staff? They know you better than any journalist. They’d know there was a good chance I was telling the truth.”

Henry stops. His back tenses up, and Carlos watches the uncharacteristic display of shock with fierce satisfaction. Without turning, Henry asks, cold as ice, “What did you say?”

Carlos laughs roughly. He goes for the lowest blow he can. “What would little Jackie think? If he knew you’d been fucking all the foster kids he’d been playing with since he was a boy? I don’t think he’d be so eager to take on the family business after that.”

Henry spins around, advances again, quick and infuriated. In a second he’s within range to grab onto the front of Carlos’ shirt, yanking forwards and up so that Carlos is straining on the tips of his feet against Henry’s considerable strength.

“If you come within a hundred yards of my home or my family,” Henry snarls, “I will personally put a bullet in you.”

Carlos goes white, but his lips are still curled in a derisive sneer. “Do you really want to do that? When you can just give me this goddamn prescription?”

“I would do it with pleasure. I have wasted far too much time on you. Get out of my sight at once.” He lets go, pushing Carlos away.

Carlos stumbles backwards with the force of Henry’s push, but catches his balance in the middle of the room. 

“Fuck. No, I told you I’m not leaving without the meds. I deserve that much, even if I won’t let you put your cock near me.”

“You crossed a line you should have known never to cross. But that was always your way, was it not? Selfish. Egotistical. Never once sparing a thought for your family. I have destroyed men who are a hundred - a thousand - times more impressive than you, but I will enjoy your ruin more than any of theirs.”

All of a sudden, the threat makes Carlos go cold, and he realises just how deadly serious Henry is. There’s ice in his foster father’s voice like he’s never heard before, undiluted by even a shred of familiar mockery. Henry isn’t trying to intimidate him. He’s merely telling Carlos the complete truth. 

No, no,  _ no, _ he only said that shit in the heat of the moment. 

Without Henry, he has absolutely nothing.

He flails frantically to backtrack. “I don’t care about-- About telling anyone. I swear. I just want what you already said you would give me. I didn’t mean it!”

Henry scoffs. “You have shown your true colours. I should thank you.”

Carlos shakes his head. “I was bluffing. I know no one would ever take me seriously, okay? And I wouldn’t mess with Jackie - he’s a good kid. Fuck, all I want is the pay and the prescription, I won’t come near you ever again!”

Henry starts putting his clothing back in order, slow and methodical. “Oh, silly boy, you can’t take it all back now. I had thought your close association with me would have shown you that I do not take threats - especially those against my family - lightly. That I am not merciful.”

Carlos takes several unsteady steps forward and reaches out to clutch at Henry’s arm. “They weren’t real threats. Sir, please, I’m sorry! We can still--” He reaches up to his collar and pulls the buttons loose. 

Henry pulls his arm free and says, conversationally, “Oh, no, I’ve quite lost my appetite.”

Carlos threads a hand into his hair, pulling desperately, his face twisted. “Please, I can’t leave without it! I’m sorry!” He tries to grab at Henry’s arm again.

Henry’s hand lashes out and he strikes Carlos across the face. The blow sends Carlos stumbling backwards and clutching a hand to his cheek in shock. 

“Do not touch me again.”

He stares at Henry, his eyes huge. “You  _ hit  _ me. I could-- I could tell someone.”

Henry laughs. “Try it.”

Carlos doesn’t say anything. There is nothing left to say. He puts his clothes hastily back in order and seizes his jacket from the end of the bed. He scrambles for his bag, picking up the loose papers from the floor without caring if they crumple.

“Oh, and Carlos?”

Carlos turns to face him. “What?” he snarls, all traces of pleading gone from his voice.

“Thank you.”

“What the fuck for?”

Henry looks down at him with such contempt that Carlos feels barely human. “I had been agonising over what to do with you, now that I have found someone far superior. I appreciate that you have made the decision so simple.”

Carlos turns and wrenches the door open with something halfway between a laugh and a sob. He slams it behind him.

He should feel at least a glimmer of relief.

He doesn’t.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading, friends!


End file.
